Sip

by Brian Allen Carr

  He saw only wreckage and char, destruction and gore.

  Dead bodies lay strewn amongst piles of debris. Threads of smoke bled from mounds of ash.

  A cataleptic hush drenched the disorder. A gray apocalypse of whist.

  Drummond smelled gunpowder and death. His skin grew goose bumps at the mystery.

  Naked, in the dim light, he considered his fate, inspected his soreness.

  “Shit,” he said to himself, his voice echoing in that metallic space.

  His imprisonment was supposed to be a week long. Now, he had no idea. He sat near the sunlight, let the warmth touch his skin.

  The Thief

  Murk hoisted Bale away from the dead man and they gave chase, ducking the same train car the thief had disappeared beneath, following him out into the field beyond, toward a brush sparsely leaved. Bale shouldered his rifle and thought of firing, but he wasn’t certain he could aim for gagging. He figured he’d miss as the thief distanced. His mind filled with the rotting face. The sparkling decay of it. The dead man’s skull like twinkling garbage.

  Murk grabbed him by the elbow, dragged him on, and the two slowed as they entered a mess of thorny limbs, bobbing into the mayhem of shrubbery.

  “Where’d you go?” Murk called out.

  They heard tussling.

  Rounding an oak tree, they saw the thief cradling an old man who slept in his lap. The man raised a finger to his lips, shushing Bale and Murk. He whispered, “He ain’t slept in days.”

  Bale whispered back, “I don’t give a shit ’bout him,” and he aimed at the thief, placed the barrel of his rifle against his forehead, about made to fire a round through his brain.

  “Then why you whispering?” The thief seemed affable there—in his dingy attire, in his compromised position. “Name’s Jessup,” he hissed. “This my pa, Rondell. He’s in a bad way.”

  “Shadow stolen?” said Murk, and Bale’s face showed disbelieving.

  “Yup.” It was like Jessup’s voice was made of breeze. He looked like he’d clean a toilet with his bare hands for a sandwich.

  Murk leaned on his good leg.

  “I’m not about to just let this go without some kind of apology,” said Bale. He applied pressure, the barrel driving Jessup’s head back and Jessup’s eyes thinning with fear.

  “Course not, son. If it weren’t for desperate measures . . .” he chanced some amenable gesture. “Dad and I are in pursuit, I suppose. He’s been aching for sleep. About delirious. We’ve spent the past three days trailing his thief. We’re away from our livestock.”

  “Livestock?” said Murk.

  “We got goats at home. He gets swallows off ’em. Sleeps like a baby. But out here you gotta chase critters, and it ain’t all that easy. I lucked into you.”

  “After his thief?” said Murk. “Why?”

  Rondell snored a bit in Jessup’s lap. “He passed through our parts. Through here. He’s the one that paints them skulls with the tic-tac-toe eyes.”

  “He sacked the outpost?” said Bale. More pressure from the barrel. Jessup in pain from the pressing, his neck cricked.

  “Hell no. Fella’s a nothing. A little redheaded troll. Bout chest high to you. Runs alone as far as I know. Snuck up on dad while he napped on the lawn. He’d been drinking. He’s a drinker. We both are really. I don’t suppose you got any booze?”

  “No,” said Bale.

  “Makes sense.” Jessup frowned down at his father. “Whatever got this town was something else entirely. I’ve seen others the same.”

  “If your dad’s happy back home, why go out after him? Seems too risky just for payback,” Murk said.

  “Would be, but it’s more than just that. We kill him, Dad goes back normal. Well, normal as he used to be.” Bale eased a bit. Jessup said, “Dad’s healer said so. We went to her straight away when he got like this. She’s the one gave us the goats. We did that a few days until he was well enough to set out. We brought one with us but he died of tired a few days back.”

  “What?” More pressure.

  “Yeah, the tired got him. Poor little thing. I don’t think we could’ve taught him to drink shadows. We ate him. He tasted fine.”

  “The healer part,” said Bale.

  “Oh, she’s never steered Dad wrong yet. Burns off his warts and all. Said there’s a comet coming.”

  “A comet?” said Bale.

  “Halley’s. Showed it to us in a telescope. You can’t see it now, but it’s out there. It’s gonna bring back shadows. But your thief’s gotta die first. She seen it in her science.”

  The wind pushed tree branches. Birds chirped and cooed.

  “You mean like a shooting star?” said Murk. “For wishing with?”

  “Bigger. Brighter. Like a tiny sun.”

  Bale looked at the heavens. Bizarrely broad to him. Almost made his head ache just looking up. “When?”

  “A week, maybe. Maybe sooner.” Jessup pawed at his clothes, pulled his face away from Bale’s barrel. A red circle imprint stained his forehead. He kneaded it with a knuckle. “We set out ill equipped on account of our haste. Did I already ask y’all about booze?”

  Bale, lost in his contemplation of the sky, let his rifle barrel ease toward the ground.

  “But what’s it do to fix anything?” said Murk.

  “She had a chart, but I didn’t get it. She took away Dad’s pneumonia once with an egg.”

  “An eating egg?” said Bale, his attention back on Jessup.

  “Pulled his sick into the egg and cracked it open and the yolk was red and he was better.”

  “You people are fucked up,” said Bale.

  Rondell’s sleepy breathing rasped.

  “Well,” said Murk, “I guess good luck.”

  “Wait,” said Bale. “That’s it? We’re not gonna do anything for payback? Fuckers stole my shadow some.”

  Murk shrugged. “I mean, seems they’re in a bad enough way. But shoot ’em if you want.”

  Murk had a point. They sat so stranded. So foolish. “Shit,” Bale said. “You’ll just owe me.”

  Drummond and

  the Light

  Drummond watched the thin daylight dwindle. The hole in the train car roof faced west. He could see the sunset. The final glint that sat on the horizon glowed like magic. Its orange fire seemed impossible. Its surface subtracted continually as Drummond pressed his face against the metal prison. He seemed locked that way, watching as it disappeared. Hoping something good would come.

  Return to Mira

  The day dampened. Dusk was up. Murk and Bale worked toward Mira’s house. Bale’s feet dragged, he’d unbuttoned his shirt, let the breeze sweep over him. Murk hummed, held his jacket folded over an arm.

  “Mira have goats?” Bale asked.

  “And chickens. And rabbits. Her mom’s against it. For whatever reason. Would rather have Mira running all over finding wild shade for her.”

  “She just a shitty person?”

  Murk tucked his hair behind an ear. “Just sick, I guess. You ever hear the Doors?”

  “This like flying?”

  “Nah. It’s a band. Music.”

  “Nope. They good?”

  “Don’t tell Mira, but I don’t know. I found an album cover of theirs once, but there wasn’t a record inside. I liked the guy’s hair though. On the cover.” Murk picked at a scratch on his jacket. A place the leather was rough.

  Cicadas chirped. Birds warbled.

  “Think Jessup’s right? About murder and the comet.”

  “There’s gotta be something that works, but who knows?”

  “Should we tell Mira?”

  Murk stopped. “It’s a new moon tonight.”

  “Okay.”

  “So I’m gonna leave you here. Mira’s house is just through there. I don’t like anyone to wat
ch me when I’m draining. I’ll come tomorrow.”

  “Draining?”

  “No moonlight or sunlight. The darkness drains out all the way. Leaks off and I can’t do nothing to stop it for hours. Aches like rust on your bones.” Murk seemed afraid. Jittery. His black eyes strained as though he’d cry ink-like tears.

  “I get it,” Bale said, but he didn’t. He almost reached to pat Murk’s shoulder but stopped short. “Just through there?” He said, tensing toward Mira’s.

  Murk twitched. “Not far at all.” He paced out into the darkening day, and Bale dipped and bobbed through the branches.

  Over Soup

  Bale told Mira about the train as Mira worked on dinner. Before they sat to eat, they tied Mira’s mother to a chair.

  “Does it hurt her?” Bale asked.

  “The tying?”

  “The moon being gone. Like it does to Murk?”

  “Nah. She gets kind of lively really. We don’t tie her down, she’ll get up and try dancing but fall over.”

  They went to the kitchen and Mira served Bale rabbit soup. “Like it?”

  Food was a miracle to Bale. Something as ordinary as salty broth. Gigantically thin. Impossibly simple. “Rabbits don’t look like they’d taste this good.”

  Mira ate roasted carrots and celery. Golden-brown blisters, shimmering iridescent. She picked at her food with a fork.

  “There not enough for both of us?”

  “There was,” said Mira. “More if you want. I just can’t eat rabbit. Mom can, but it’s not for me.”

  Bale slowed his eating. “Well, you cook it good.”

  “Thanks.”

  From the other room, they could hear Mira’s mother groan.

  “Where does Murk go?”

  “Who knows? If you wander around in the nights like these, you hear people screaming pain near everywhere. Distantly, most times, but the draining makes most folks flop off wherever. Mom used to call it fright night.”

  Bale pulled a bone from the stew, was about to gnaw on it. “What about what I said earlier? About Jessup and his dad.”

  “It’d be nice if we could fix her. It’s why I went to the train the last time. She wanted me to see about a cure.”

  “And the first time? With the flowers.”

  “Citrus blossoms.”

  “Citrus blossoms,” Bale repeated her. “Any of them ever quit shadows? Like, in the morning, when Murk wakes up, he’ll be normal?”

  “As normal as he gets, maybe. He’ll look like dog shit and feel like it too, and then he’ll find his shadow and be right back where he was.”

  “What if it’s cloudy?”

  “The sun’ll come out eventually.”

  “So, once a month they shut down. Become defenseless basically. Why did people have to go into the domes at all? Why didn’t they just wait for a new moon and catch ’em while they drained?”

  “Mom says they did. Years ago. They wrangled people up while they drained. Mom says it’s why the domes exist. Like they were made for shadow addicts. The trains too.”

  “Serious?”

  “That’s what she says. But people heard they were killing each other. Killing themselves. Inside. And people outside just drank more shadows.”

  “I’ve never heard that, but I guess it’s possible.”

  “She might be wrong too, but she says they flip-flopped it. Addicts and their families stayed out. All the good people went in.”

  They ate. The muddled sound of chewing. Fork tines and spoon tips against porcelain, tink-tinkling.

  After a moment, Mira said, “Even if it’s true about the shadows and comets, about what you heard from that man. I don’t know Mom’s thief, who to even start looking for. And, if I found them, I don’t really see myself as a killer.”

  “Murk and I could do it.” Bale’s matter-of-fact eyes.

  “You don’t know where you’re at, and Murk is somewhere screaming cusses at the night.”

  “It’s worth a try. If we find who did it, and it works. And she gets better. No more shade trading.”

  Mira scooted her vegetables. Her fork clink-clinking. “We can ask if she remembers, but I’m not sure she does.”

  After dinner, they stood on the porch, stared up at the night. “It’s crazy y’all have ’em.”

  “What?”

  “The stars.”

  Back in the dome, they’d taught about night. They said there were people who could tell your future based on the stars that were out when you were born. Bale didn’t know what stars he was born beneath, but he hoped they were the good-future kind. He thought: tonight, they shine for me. And the comet coming made them shine even brighter.

  The Draining

  Dark, dark night. In a bitter state, Murk thrashed, his body scrunched back into chest-high foliage, wriggling against the earth and mashing grass blades beneath him. He wretched and he wrestled, grabbed handfuls of anything his hands landed on.

  The black veins beneath his skin began to bleed their color through his flesh, which darkened back from pale, and as the blackness slipped out his pores, it whispered away as vapor might. The scent of it like urine, and Murk trembled in the stench, his tongue foul-stuck to the backs of his teeth, his jaw aching as though locked tight.

  He sat prone. Rocking. “Shitty fucking shit,” Murk said. “Shitty, shit, shitty.”

  three

  For every black magic that infects the world, a miracle occurs to offset it. There came another way to make a shadow gone. A young girl discovered the trick, though she couldn’t fully articulate it. She could simply make the thing disappear with her mind. It was a condition, like balance. A sense, like smell. But she could guide others into the performance.

  Word spread and followers flocked. They formed some shadowless army.

  Ranks of women gathered in formation, their shadows hidden from the gaze of the world, their long hair braided behind them, moving in near silence. They shouldered rifles, rubbed ash around their eyes.

  Most of these soldiers once had mothers who’d been molested, thieved from, who’d lost their shadows, their ability to sleep. They’d been raised on lies, told, “Inside the dome, they’re working to fix it.” But the fix never materialized.

  And then the trains came.

  Into the wilderness, a slow-motion invasion, moving over chewed-up tracks, a recycled procession.

  The female army sought vengeance for false myths. They swept through the world like organized catastrophe, a plague on the train-circled dwellings. They machined over the outposts, blundering the trains, murdering the domers. They hoarded rifles and swords, gunpowder and coal. They built catapults that heaved rudimentary explosives. They invaded in broad daylight or whistled through in the darkness. They shrieked and hollered, howled and yelped. Spat curses, bit cheeks, ran knives across throats.

  Hardened animals—stern women with certain eyes. Nomads who slept in tent cities like warring Visigoths, chanting violent hymns to deities they invented in their images. The flavor of their murderous lust an electricity that bound them to their missions. And they took no prisoners, save for one.

  The Morning After

  The sun was up, so the dark could start. Everywhere, men and women dragged themselves into the light from wallows and hovels, from snag crooks and mishap holes to drop, once again, into the stupor the sun gave them. Murk was among these. He woke in grass, his wooden leg clutched to his chest, his hair messed and crazed. His eyelids smiled open and then his mouth. He blinked fiercely. He gulped at air. Using the fake leg like a cane, he hopped to his foot, and hopping thusly, sprang into the day and found a nice flat bit of dirt to guzzle his shadow from. “A world with two suns,” he sang, “that is the dream.” He beamed at the sun, “You sweet bitch,” he told it. He gaped at his shade. “I always tell you,” he told it, “I always say just stay inside
me.” The shadow stared back, silent. “But you always leave.” Murk pointed down at the thing as though it were alive. “I know it’s not your fault,” he told it, “but still.” He dropped to the earth, sort of stroked his shadow with the back of a finger. “Should we get to it?” he asked. He didn’t wait for a response. “A world with two suns,” he sang. Then he placed his mouth to the dimness, his lips on the dirt. He slurped it the way those from the coast slurped oysters from their shells, ingurgitating the darkness, sloshing up dirt in his spittle that crunched between his teeth. Immediately, his skin paled. His eyes began their darkening. “That is the dream,” he sang when the drinking was done.

  He stood on one leg. His veins dark through his pale flesh. He wanted to fly.

  “The train,” he said. And, with his leg still not yet attached, he attempted to run, fell face down on the ground, began hysterically laughing. He crawled on the ground to his peg, rolled to his back and strapped it on snug.

  Once it was on, he did his best to spring erect. Disoriented a bit, he spun slowly trying to place himself. He held up a finger. “The train?” He glared. He pointed. “That way.” And he took off—the sort of singsong jog of a false-legged man.

  The Shadowless

  Chaperones

  The Founder of the Shadowless Army had a son with a domer. It was scandalous. She took the father hostage after they sacked a train because he had pretty red hair and she kept him as a concubine. He told her that the domers were sterilized before leaving, so when she got pregnant, she killed him.

  The Founder did her best to keep the child hid. He didn’t leave her tent for years, toddling to and fro under the supervision of lesser soldiers. She never even hugged him.